After years of investing 50% of their income and maxing out their retirement accounts, Andy and Nicole Hill reduced their contribution rate to 10% around 2020. Eventually, they stopped contributing to retirement accounts altogether.
Still, “the balance has grown from around $550,000 in 2021 when we stopped to closer to $1 million without any further contributions,” Hill, 44, said. Business Insider confirmed their near-seven-figure portfolio by reviewing screenshots of their Vanguard accounts.
The Michigan-based couple stopped investing after hitting “Coast FIRE,” an offshoot of the financial independence, retire early (FIRE) movement. The idea is to invest enough early on that, even if you stop contributing, your portfolio can continue growing over time and eventually support you later in life. In other words, you can “coast” into retirement.
Hill first came across the FIRE movement around 2015. He was unhappy working as a marketing director and was looking for a way out of corporate America. Between long workdays and being a father of young kids, “I was very pinched for time,” he said. “I felt kind of trapped.”
The idea of living on less, investing the difference, and eventually buying back his time resonated.
“It sounded like exactly what I wanted,” he said of the FIRE movement.
Reaching ‘Coast FIRE’ by investing in index funds
After a few years of pursuing traditional FIRE, the Hills decided to pivot to Coast FIRE — a less extreme version that would allow them to “still enjoy today,” as Hill put it.
Coast FIRE involves front-loading investments so a portfolio can grow over time without requiring ongoing contributions. That frees up money that might otherwise go toward retirement and allows families to use it for other priorities.
Using a compound interest calculator, the couple determined that they’d need about $550,000 in investments by age 40 to hit Coast FIRE. Assuming a 6% rate of return, that amount could grow to around $2 million by the time they retire, “and that was plenty for us to live on,” Hill said.
To build the initial $550,000 portfolio, the Hills invested about half of their income in low-cost index funds, a popular strategy within the FIRE community.
Hill appreciated the simplicity of the strategy, especially having been “burned in the past by working with a financial advisor,” he said. “I quickly learned the importance of understanding the fee structure and what a front-load fee is.”
After doing his own research using books like “The Simple Path to Wealth” and podcasts like “Financial Rockstar,” “I found that the investing style that worked best for me was low-cost, passive index-fund investing in the overall broad US stock market,” he said.
The strategy has grown his and Nicole’s portfolio from around $16,000 in 2010, the year they got married, to around $550,000 in 2021, he said. That’s when he quit his corporate job to focus on his own business, Marriage Kids and Money, which began as a blog to document his FIRE journey back in 2016. Ten years later, it’s evolved into a podcast, book, and coaching business. Hill said he works 20-25 hours a week over three days: Tuesday to Thursday.
Courtesy of Andy and Nicole Hill
The Hills use traditional retirement accounts, Roth IRAs, an HSA investment account, and taxable brokerage accounts. They also invest for their children through 529 college-savings accounts.
“But that’s it,” Hill said. “We keep it simple.”
At one point, they considered adding real estate to their portfolio and started looking at rental properties in the Detroit area. Ultimately, they figured rentals would only add headaches and stress to their already busy lives.
“Both my wife and I looked at each other and were like, ‘I don’t want to do this. Do you want to do this?'” Hill said. “Do you want to be a landlord? Do you want to fix up problems in the middle of the night?”
They decided not to invest in real estate or alternatives. Hill said he views his small business as another kind of investment, but in his financial portfolio, he has stuck with index funds.
He’s quick to point out that his portfolio’s growth has benefited from a strong stock market, and he knows that past performance does not guarantee future results. He expects the market to fluctuate, and said he’s already seen their balance decline during down years. In 2022, for example, “we saw our numbers go down,” he said. They didn’t make any portfolio changes and chose to simply hold steady.
Since the Hills don’t plan to use their retirement money for a couple of decades, they feel comfortable riding out short-term volatility.
“We still have 20 more years until we need this money,” he said. “In the meantime, we’re very happy with our part-time work schedule, and we’ve both never been happier working in the capacity that we do.”